Instapundit links to this article on Hugo Chavez’s financial woes exacerbated by rapidly falling oil prices. I think it important to remember that Russia remains just as dependent on oil revenues as Chavez’s regime and while Chavez’s is merely annoying, Russia has nukes.
The great oil bust of ’83 triggered the fall of the Soviet Union. We should keep an eye things over there.
With the drop in the price of oil,
Russia will be hurtin..
Iran will be hurting..
and Chavez will be hurting..
couldn’t happen to 3 more deserving guys.
Who says there is no silver lining.
This also implys that now is the time
to bomb Iran, when there is excess oil
supply showing around the world.
Israel you listening??
Should be interesting few months!!
No need for Israel to bomb Iran. Just sink 2 or 3 tankers going into the terminals. Use Russian weapons. Lloyds stops insuring ships, they won’t go to Iran. No crude outbound will hurt, but no gasoline tankers inbound and the Iranian economy collapses. Israel would be the top suspect – but they wouldn’t be the only suspect. Iran off line boosts prices, that benefits the Russians and every other country in the gulf.
Meanwhile, the US offers to escort tankers – provided Iran completely disassembles it’s nuke program and loads everything onto freighters for Australia.
This situation, once again, proves the need for energy self-sufficiency on the part of the U.S. We enable Iran, Venezuela, and Russia by importing so much of our oil requirements.
Oil is the curse of third world countries.
Chavez is a curse for Venezuela and the region. He has saved nothing for rainy days like today’s, he has thrown all of Venezuela’s money into political parodies while at the same time destroying private enterprise in his country. Cemex, Bimbo and many other Mexican companies have closed shop in Venezuela, same happening to Spanish banks like Santander and other, but Brazilian companies thrive in his local personal market. It is not socialism, it is purest form of crooked capitalism, worst than the Chinese, the Chinese at least seem to have a clear direction and are rapidly industrializing their nation, but Venezuela’s crooked capitalism lacks any direction, is steams out of naivete ideas in ignorant minds, lacks any checks and balances, any understanding of how economies work.
And Chavez is also a curse for Cubans aspirations for freedom and democracy, for he has saved the financially broken Castro’s regime with cheap oil and cash infusions to the island, prolonging the life of the authoritarian regime.
I am glad oil prices are down, and I hope your predictions hold true. It seems to me oil and other commodities are indeed a curse for many nations like Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and other whose populations are struggling in poverty and suffering from repression and human rights abuses while their very small governing elite is becoming millionaires.
I am glad to report that Mexico’s oil is about to end, according many reports and with its end, the incredible corruption that we suffered for decades is also little by little going away too as our authorities start demanding more and more auditing of diminishing resources, and perhaps the fact that we depend less and less on oil exports and more and more on manufacturing and agricultural exports as well as tourism, perhaps that will explain why we have less populism today and more responsible authorities, why we pay more taxes today and care a little bit more about what our government is doing with our money, why we are more demanding, perhaps we are learning.
It was the eternal argument of the socialists, when they repeatedly said that, here the same as in Venezuela, Rusia and many other oil rich nations, that the oil was the nation’s wealth, given by some manifest destiny to save the country from poverty and all its evils, they said that and then had a huge drinking and mesmerizing party with the petro-dollars from US and other developed nations, and they never understood that the only wealth a nation can have are its people and nothing else.
great analysis, Jose’. I see the same thing in Mexico. If the government can beat the narcotraficantes, it will be much better one day for all of us.